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Extra Features and Video Online FloristsReview.com R E A D O N L I N E 13 jobs for women, and they were particularly good with flowers—and they're good workers. Although men are good at this work, too, we had the opportunity to change the socioeconomic landscape dynamic by hiring a female workforce and giving women a sense of control and power. And we did. Suddenly, women were making money and, therefore, were in charge of their households. If a man came home drunk and/or was abusive, his wife could then kick him out and survive on her own. e flower industry empowered women then, and it's still like that today. We really have provided people a great standard of living for many people in Colombia. And I'm enormously proud to say that at Alexandra Farms, we have 350 female employees who are heads-of-households and in control of their lives. FR : It's such an important story to tell—the social good that the flower industry has done and is doing— but we still often hear a lot of things about the flower industry that are not so positive. J.A.: Yes. e idea that Colombian flower farmers abuse women employees is absolutely false. Maybe in the 1980s something happened in Colombia or Ecuador, but, nowadays, most of the exported flowers are from farms that have certifications both in social and environmental standards. We really take care of our people, not only because we're humans but also because it's good business. FR : Tell us about your farms. J.A.: We have two farms, both of which are small and close to each other. ere are some single farms that are 10 times the size of our two farms combined. We have 20 hectares [approximately 50 acres], which, for a rose farm, is tiny. But we're in the garden rose business, so we're a different animal. And we're the largest garden rose farm in the world; the second largest is half our size. We're tiny rose growers but huge garden rose growers. FR : What are some of the challenges with growing garden roses? J.A.: Garden roses, simply by their nature and their breeding, are not prolifically productive, and they are delicate, hard to manage, hard to post-harvest and hard to ship. And that's exactly what big farms avoid. Before Alexandra Farms, I would see beautiful rose varieties that growers would stop growing for some or all of those reasons, but I knew that florists loved them because they were beautiful. And florists would say, "I'll pay more for them," but the growers would say, "It's not enough." So beauty was just discarded. And that's the idea behind our garden rose business. We find incredibly beautiful varieties of roses that perform well as cut flowers and have really amazing natural fragrance. So we have performance, fragrance and color, but they are more challenging than other types of roses to produce, pack and ship. at's why garden roses are more expensive. FR : How did you get involved with garden roses? J.A.: Before I started Alexandra Farms, I ran Delaware Valley Floral Group's importing and freight-forwarding business in Miami. And one of the most exciting product lines was garden roses. When Delaware Valley closed that business, I had an opportunity to start a flower farm, and

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